In honor of the Pulse 2012 conference ("Optimizing the World's Infrastructure," March 4-7), I thought I'd provide a knowledgebase roundup of some resources that can help an IT pro automate and manage cloud infrastructure tasks. Many of IBM's infrastructure-management middleware products belong to the Tivoli family ... these are optimized to provide efficient management for cloud systems:

Monitor services in the cloud: Discover the secrets of monitoring cloud services through tips, tricks, and tools | Monitoring cloud services is one of the major cornerstones of the cloud. By monitoring cloud services, you can determine whether you're extracting the most you can out of your resource utilization. In this article, the authors define monitoring with a specific eye on monitoring in the IBM Cloud environment and discuss the fundamental options for monitoring in the IBM Cloud. They walk you through two scenarios designed to illustrate the technical process of monitoring cloud services, demonstrate IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) Autonomous Agent and RESTful APIs, two tools for monitoring services, and take you step by step into setting up and using the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Autonomous Agent on the IBM Cloud.

Product page: IBM Tivoli Monitoring software helps you optimize IT infrastructure performance and availability. Use this system monitoring software to manage operating systems, databases and servers in distributed and host environments.

Deploy a J2EE app with TSAM extensions |
IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM) 7.2.2 introduces the extension, a set of TSAM software components that can implement a new IT service automation solution (known as a service definition) or add capabilities to existing service definitions. In this article, the authors define a scenario in which the desired result is to securely deploy a three-tiered enterprise application (in this case J2EE) to the cloud. They demonstrate how to set up and provision extensions in TSAM as the first step to accomplishing this task.

Real-world journey to your own private cloud, Part 1: Prepare the concept | Part 2: Install and configure the software | Part 3: Use the cloud | In this article series, the author outlines the process, from conception to deployment, that his team used to build a private, on-premise cloud environment that incorporates structures found in IaaS and PaaS cloud service models. The cloud environment is constructed with software and hardware components chosen by the team; however, the article contains knowledge and instruction that can be used regardless of technologies you choose. Part 1 provides information on cloud structures, the five phases in the development roadmap, and details on some of the solutions the team discovered. Part 2 provides information on installing and configuring the server environments and cloud software components, post-installation activities, and special features of the installed software. Part 3 defines IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM) user roles, provides an example of the cloud provisioning process and a list of sample exercises the user can do to test the implementation, and shows you some general tricks and tips we learned in implementing the project.

Build a private cloud with IWD and TSAM | An organization must address a number of considerations when building a private cloud computing environment; specifically, it needs to take a holistic approach to private clouds that include creating, deploying, monitoring, and managing service construction and delivery. Both the Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM) and WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance (now known as IBM Workload Deployer) equip users with these capabilities. In this article, the authors discuss why and how you can integrate Tivoli Service Automation Manager with WebSphere CloudBurst to deliver a private cloud.

Product page: IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business is a single sign-on (SSO) solution that authorizes and authenticates user access to web and other hosted applications. It centralizes user access management for online portal and business initiatives.

Establish a system to build custom virtual cloud images |
Virtual images allow users to freeze-dry preferred software environments and deliver them to users in a rapid and consistent manner: As a result, companies are turning to virtual images as a means to improve software delivery within their data centers. As they make greater use of virtual images, challenges are emerging -- such as determining how much content to put into a single image and how best to construct these images. The authors discuss these challenges and introduce the IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool (ICCT), freely available for download, that addresses many of these challenges and provides a systematic approach to constructing virtual images in the cloud.

Product page: You can use the IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool to build virtual images for deployment into cloud environments. The ICCT is model-driven and easy-to-use. It promotes a separation of concern and tasks, where experts build particular software bundles for reuse by others. This design approach greatly simplifies the complexity of image creation and reduces errors. The ICCT is designed to enable efficient reuse and management of images and software in a cloud environment. It provides the capability to build and share images that are self-descriptive, customizable, and easily managed.

Product page:
With IBM SmartCloud Monitoring, you can maximize the density of your virtual environment while ensuring high availability of critical workloads. Also known as Tivoli Monitoring for Virtual Environments, this product provides capacity planning and virtualization and cloud monitoring across multiple hypervisor platforms.

Product page: IBM Service Delivery Manager is a pre-integrated software stack, deployed as a set of virtual images that automate IT service deployment and provide resource monitoring and cost management in a cloud. IBM Service Delivery Manager is a cloud management platform that enables the data center to accelerate the creation of service platforms for a wide spectrum of workload types with a high degree of integration, flexibility, and resource optimization.

The following library of articles, written by IBM Cloud experts, shows you how to successfully perform certain tasks on the IBM Cloud. In many of these resources, you'll find not just the steps to perform the task, but some explanation of the concepts behind the tasks.

developerWorks cloud computing has woven several topic threads throughout its knowledge base; one of these is designed to help you determine whether or not you need a policy for various aspects of cloud computing, including service security, mobile access, performance metrics, threshold, workload balancing, policy automation, and billing. For example:

Craft a cloud performance metrics policy: Often businesses and agencies use performance metrics to measure how well the system is performing; not as often do they use them to measure how well cloud services are performing. In this article, the author explains why it is best to be proactive using cloud performance metrics to fix the problems before service outages could happen and provides three proactive steps -- on monitoring performance, testing performance, and crafting a cloud performance metrics policy -- to help you avoid poor cloud performance.

Craft a cloud service security policy: For economic reasons, often businesses and government agencies move data center operations to the cloud whether they want to or not; their reasons for not liking the idea of hosting in a cloud are reliability and security. To help ease business security concerns, a cloud security policy should be in place. In this article, the author explains how to craft a cloud security policy for managing users, protecting data, and securing virtual machines.

Balance workload in a cloud environment: Many businesses and government agencies demand cloud services to provide continuous operational availability and security. To make this a reality, they will require a threshold policy on resource management for application testing and production. In this article, the author explains what a threshold policy is and how it can help to balance workload demands dynamically in a cloud environment.

Build proactive threshold policies on the cloud: Often businesses and agencies implement technical, organizational, and business policies to ensure that users comply with the terms in the policy; in other words, to inform cloud computing service consumers and providers what they should do. This is the purpose of a carefully crafted threshold policy -- too often, this level of policy does not exist. In this article, the author explains how to craft the policies with examples; follow these templates on purpose, scope, background, consumer control, actions, and constraints to learn to craft resource, user, and data request threshold policies for the cloud.

Cloud services: Mitigate risks, maintain availability: Businesses and government agencies demand cloud services to provide better security in order to ensure continuous operational availability. To make this a reality, they need to formulate a cloud service policy on risk mitigation. Learn about cloud service security and how to mitigate risks to cloud services to ensure high uptime availability and security in a cloud environment.

IBM SmartCloud Enterprise tip: Integrate your authentication policy using a proxy: Managing business rules for the authorization and authentication of custom-built cloud applications in the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise environment doesn't have to be a difficult task. The author uses the structure of IBM Cloud APIs to demonstrate how to build business rules into a proxy that bridges among the command line, Java, and RESTful APIs. Using a proxy also keeps users from skipping around your business rules when accessing the IBM Cloud portal.

Cloud billing service: Cloud billing is the process of generating bills from the resource usage data using a set of predefined billing policies. The author defines a cloud billing service module enabled for a service oriented architecture, covering both functional requirements -- a quote service, conversion functions and policies, payment schemes, and user identification -- and the non-functional, but essential, requirements such as security, scalability, standards, and fault tolerance.

Cloud business analytics: Write your own dashboard: Business analytics and cloud computing are hot, complex topics; the idea of combining the two could drive away those with less experience. But fear not: The author provides a simple look at the complex history of business analytics, illuminates the common points where both meet, explains the benefits that a cloud environment can bring to business analytics (and vice-versa), and gives you an example for writing your own cloud business analytics application.

The external IBM developerWorks cloud community -- made up of developers, programmers, administrators, designers and planners, and ecosystem partners - contribute greatly to the developerWorks knowledge base of cloud computing technology. Here are some of our recent contributors and the cutting-edge information they bring with them.

Grid and P2P add to automated testing on the cloud: Randy Hayes, Founder and CTO of Grid Robotics, explains how automated testing on the cloud is the answer to the roadblock that testing the explosive increase in applications that deal with mobile access. His concept: Adding grid computing and peer-to-peer collaboration functionality to make automated testing on the cloud more effective.

Optimize cloud application delivery systems: Alex Gosse, Solutions Architect for Zeus Technology, introduces the concepts that make up a "traffic management" model designed to effect better delivery of your cloud applications. Focus is on the application delivery controller.

Build a more secure, mobile cloud environment: Mobile security guru Preston Cox illuminates mobile cloud security issues by looking at the current state of cloud security breaches, vulnerabilities of mobile cloud devices, and how to address those vulnerabilities.

Disaster recovery in a cloud environment: Educopia Institute System Engineer Bill Robbins outlines steps he took in a disaster recovery exercise at his organization and learn how you can use the process provided as a template for your own disaster recovery efforts.

Deliver cloud network control to the user: Co-founder of CohesiveFT Ryan Koop describes how using a virtual network -- hybrid devices that act as virtual routers, switches, SSL and IPSec VPN concentrators, and protocol redistributors, all tied up in a configurable mesh -- can give the user control of addressing, topology, protocols, and encrypted communications for the devices the user deploys to the cloud.

Enable application-centric cloud management: Kaavo Senior Software Developer Joydeep Biswas presents a definition of application-centric-style management, the three key steps to achieving it, and demonstrates how to automate the deployment of a two-tier J2EE application in the IBM Cloud.

There are six new and updated images you can use in the IBM Smart Business Cloud – Enterprise. The new images include

IBM Informix Innovator-C Edition 11.70 32b: Designed for low-cost embedded or workgroup computing, the Innovator-C database is ideal for small-to-midsized business solutions that require a robust database with little or no administration. It allows unlimited data storage, includes replication and some clustering capabilities and autonomic features that eliminate system failures, offers automated backup and restore functions, and provides a customized deployment footprint. Pay-as-you-go licensing.

IBM Rational Team Concert 3.0: A complete, lean, collaborative life cycle management and development system based on the Jazz platform, Rational Team Concert helps you build better software in teams by providing the tools to enable agile development and formal and hybrid planning and reporting on a common platform. Bring-your-own licensing.

IBM announces an advanced level of support in the 1.4 release of the IBM Smart Business Cloud – Enterprise (formerly IBM Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud) to complement the services at the Premium Support level.

Virtual images are popular because they allow developers and administrators to rapidly and consistently deliver user environments; with ever-increasing popularity, though, comes some new costs, such as the efforts involved in creating and managing these images. The IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool helps users build more flexible, reusable, multi-purpose virtual images through a modular approach.

With ICCT, a user defines an operating system environment, then defines such additional software as app servers and development tools ... in other words, providing the components for the virtual image. Next the user defines input parameters and a set of configuration actions for the virtual image. At this point, the ICCT builds the image and automatically wires the user-defined configuration actions into the image's activation framework.

The user can deploy the image using the IBM Cloud, WebSphere CloudBurst, or Tivoli Provisioning Manager; he can pass in unique input parameters to which the configuration actions have access, resulting in a virtual image that automatically configures itself based on the requirements defined by the deployer.

Here is a roundup of knowledge resources on the IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool:

A recent IBM developerWorks survey of more than 2,000 IT professionals indicates that most IT experts, a whopping 91 percent, believe cloud computing will overtake on-premise computing as the primary way organizations acquire IT by 2015. One way you can interpret this data is by saying that cloud computing has achieved a maturity level that makes it mainstream technology.

With that in mind, IBM introduces the IBM Cloud Computing Specialty, a single program that brings together an ecosystem of resources that provide a comprehensive set of cloud computing services and offerings for a broad range of users. The Cloud Specialty is built based on feedback from partners. With it, business partners get training and technical resources in the area of cloud computing to gain documented skills, work more closely with each other and IBM, and be rewarded as they leverage IBM technology with their cloud offerings.

The Cloud Specialty will support five paths or company types so partners can claim cloud computing expertise:

Cloud Application Providers deliver business applications through the cloud.

Cloud Technology Providers provide the tools, services, and technologies (like cloud management, billing, metering, monitoring) that help clients use the cloud more effectively.

Earning a Cloud Specialty will give you tools to help you assess your clients' strategies for cloud computing, continued insight into IBM's ever-evolving cloud strategy, and access to excellent collaboration tools such as LotusLive so you can showcase the benefits of cloud computing.

The Lotusphere 2011 conference (January 30 through February 3, 2011 in Orlando, Florida, USA) is where you'll want to be if you're a cloud expert. A sampling of cloud-oriented sessions includes

Capitalizing on the Cloud with LotusLiveLotusLive VP Sean Poulley will show you how using IBM LotusLive as a platform to integrate SaaS-based collaboration from potential partners, adding more value to your business in the forms of apps and services.

Raising Your Applications to the CloudMichael Masterson and Nathan Freeman demonstrate the Lotus-powered tools, assets, and infrastructure you need to convert and migrate your applications to the cloud.

Make the IBM LotusLive Notes "Hybrid" a RealityDavid Bell and Phillipe Loher explain the LotusLive Notes "hybrid" configuration that allows you to extend your on-premises Notes and Domino environment into LotusLive cloud. Learn about the architecture, requirements, management choices, and best practices.

Taking Your Notes Apps and Infrastructure to the CloudJennifer Meade and Nathan Freeman show you how to revitalize your existing Lotus Notes applications and get modern, stylized, Web 2.0 applications, then how you can take those applications into the cloud with GBS Live.

The Elastic Portal: Farming in the CloudJ. Paul Kelsey details and demonstrates the Portal Farm, a collection of independent portal server instances that act like a cluster and automatically grow and shrink in response to changes in usage levels.

To the Cloud or Not to the Cloud: That’s the QuestionThis Birds of a Feather session poses the title question and discusses options, worries, and benefits that arise from asking the question. It will cover proving the business case, managing the risk, the right mix of public and on-premise, and more.

Topic: Images in the IBM Cloud, December 2010Environment/software: All systems/all softwareLevel/type: Overview/information roundup

There is a new release of the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud, version 1.3, and a new cloud delivery center in Boulder, Colorado. You might want to take a look at these exciting cloud images.

Bringing rapid web and mobile app development to the power of DominoLotus Domino Enterprise Server 8.5.2 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (32-bit)

With the latest addition of XPages technology, the Domino platform has the enhanced ability to make it easy to rapidly design Web 2.0 collaborative applications. XPages are a rapid web and mobile application development platform whose programming model is based on standards and common web development skills like JavaScript, Ajax, the Dojo Toolkit, and JavaServer Faces; it can tap into the power of IBM Lotus Domino functionality like the document-oriented database.

User capabilities include

Reference databases with basic workflow for document review.

A Teamroom application.

The ability to run Lotus Domino collaborative applications.

Server capabilities include

Lotus Domino partitioning (the capability to run more than one instance of Lotus Domino on the same machine using one copy of the Lotus Domino code).

IBM Lotus Web Content Management can help organizations increase the efficiency and accuracy of Web site deployments by placing content creation in the hands of content experts while IT can retain control. And, through advanced personalization, Lotus Web Content Management can deliver the right information to the right audience exactly when they need it.

IBM WebSphere Portal Server is the foundation offering of the WebSphere Portal product family with enterprise portal capabilities that enable you to quickly consolidate applications and content into role-based applications, complete with search, personalization, and security capabilities.

This cloud image delivers a revolutionary user experience and expands traditional business intelligence with planning, scenario modeling, real-time monitoring and predictive analytics. The Cognos Business Intelligence 10 image includes the capability to interact, search, and assemble all perspectives of your business.

The Cognos 10 image provides

Analytics everyone can use. A unified decision workspace that lets users view, assemble, and personalize data fast without help from IT. You can combine data from any source and explore it from any perspective. You can analyze facts and anticipate outcomes simply by shifting perspectives and time horizons.

Collaborative intelligence. It delivers built-in collaboration and social networking to drive the exchange of information, ideas, and activities. You can establish decision networks to discuss issues, share insights, and align decisions. You can support workflows to establish accountability and coordinate activities.

Analytics everywhere. It gives you the ability to respond quickly to changing conditions. You can deploy mobile, interactive analytics to everyone who needs them. You can integrate analytics into everyday activities and workflows.

Offered in bring-your-own-license format.

Customers can take control of data in the cloud networkCohesiveFT VPN-Cubed DataCenter Connect V0.6.4 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (32-bit bronze)

CohesiveFT's VPN-Cubed image enables customer-controlled networking in a cloud, across multiple clouds, and between private infrastructure and the clouds. The Datacenter Connect version of the VPN-Cubed overlay network is designed to work between a data center using IPsec "extranet" connectivity and Amazon EC2, GoGrid, Terremark, Flexiant's Flexiscale, and now, the Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud. Your IPsec device connects to an IPsec gateway in the cloud running as a virtual appliance which routes to your VPN-Cubed subnet in the cloud. It works with any IPsec device that supports IKE1 or IKE2, AES256 or AES128 or 3DES, SHA1, MD5, or NAT-Traversal.

They can be used to run key business computing topologies that have been moved to a cloud but still need secure access to the corporate datacenter.

They can be used to provision development infrastructure on the fly, allowing any number of identical copies of virtual servers to be run simultaneously, copies that are identical down to the IP address.

A roundup reading list of tips, best practices, mechanisms, and knowledge for using the IBM Dev&Test Cloud.

Parameterize cloud images for custom instances on the fly There are two ways to create a custom cloud image. The "static" way consists of creating an instance, customizing it, and then taking the image from this customized instance. The "dynamic" way -- where you can on-the-fly transfer information to the instance creation process in order to create your final customized image -- is a key benefit of cloud computing: It gives you to ability to create a tailored instance on the fly. In this article, the author will explain the entire process of "parameterizing" an image so that the parameters can be easily sent to the instance creation process using the IBM Cloud portal or through APIs.

Windows-targeted approaches to IBM Cloud provisioningConverging with the release of Windows 2008 Server support in IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud, this article demonstrates two approaches to using Tivoli Provisioning Manager to handle cloud provisioning with Microsoft Hyper-V (also known as Viridian or Windows Server Virtualization), a hypervisor-based virtualization system for x86-64 systems. The authors investigate two different approaches to enable Hyper-V support in Tivoli Provisioning Manager and discuss the architecture, implementation, and configuration details of the approaches.

Tips for using IBM Cloud Release 1.2: Upload and download files from a Windows instanceAs you are probably aware, support for Windows Servers images -- the 64-bit 2008 R2, the 2008 R1, and the 2003 R2 -- are being rolled out for all IBM Smart Business Development and Test Cloud Release 1.2 instance configurations. If you're thinking about moving your files to a Windows image, this article is here to help. Boas Betzler shows you how to upload and download a file to a Windows instance in the IBM Cloud 1.2.

Cognos cloud best practices: Choosing the settings to enable high availabilityThe goal of high availability is to provide a backup mechanism to transfer requests and data processing to a standby system in the event of primary system failure, but user and system requirements vary, meaning there is no one ideal configuration. This article provides a number of recommendations for setting up and maintaining the Cognos solution for high availability and for disaster recovery.

Cognos cloud best practices: Sizing the architecture for performance and scalabilityCognos 8 is a sophisticated set of products and capabilities. Sizing the architecture can be a challenging task requiring knowledge of expected system overall workload. As a result, expect some iteration on the architecture to customize it appropriately to your requirements. The authors provide some general guidelines and architecture recommendations to support a large-scale deployment of Cognos 8 onto the IBM Cloud.

Cognos cloud best practices: Moving from a single- to a multiple-image topologyJust like in a traditional data center, the deployment of Cognos into the cloud may require multiple machines, so your cloud solution may require multiple images. Criteria such as performance, scalability and high availability typically lead to a multi-image topology. The authors demonstrate the best practices for managing this type of multi-image topology.

These articles dissect the various components and technology topic areas related to cloud computing.

Anatomy of a cloud storage infrastructureCloud storage (or data storage as a service) is the abstraction of storage behind an interface where the storage can be administered on demand. Further, the interface abstracts the location of the storage such that it is irrelevant whether the storage is local or remote (or hybrid). Cloud storage infrastructures introduce new architectures that support varying levels of service over a potentially large set of users and geographically distributed storage capacity. Learn about the key architectural attributes of cloud storage architectures, from data protection and integrity to security and storage optimization.

Reduce cloud management complexity with command-line scriptingVirtualization has become the industry standard for server consolidation; however, introducing virtualization in a cloud computing environment can lead to complex management problems. IBM Systems Director VMControl is a cross-platform, multi-hypervisor suite designed to address this complexity: One powerful component of VMControl is the command-line interface (CLI) which can be used in the development of scripts to automate IBM Systems Director VMControl function. In this article, the author explains to system administrators who have a basic knowledge of system virtualization how they can exploit this ability using the Director's CLI. Examples include a simple script to exploit the power of VMControl.

Deliver cloud network control to the userOne concern for adopters of cloud technology is control -- control of data, control of access, even control of networking in the cloud, across multiple clouds, and between the cloud and private infrastructures. The authors describe how using a virtual network -- hybrid devices that act as virtual routers, switches, SSL and IPSec VPN concentrators, and protocol redistributors, all tied up in a configurable mesh -- can give the user control of addressing, topology, protocols, and encrypted communications for the devices the user deploys to the cloud. A real-world example, using existing technology, will be provided.

Considerations for migrating to the cloudIBM cloud expert Dave Russell has two conversations with the Google Cloud Computing Use Cases group about considerations and processes when planning to add a migration-to-the-cloud section to the group's ever-evolving whitepaper on cloud computing.

Service virtualization and validation practices for the utility industryThe utilities industry must modernize IT resources and existing, antiquated technologies to meet current business and regulatory requirements and gain better visibility and control of power across the grid. A particular challenge is Advanced Metering Systems. In this article the authors demonstrate how service virtualization can help development and QA teams to meet the challenges of today's smart meter and smart grid implementations.

Review and summary of cloud service level agreementsThis is a review of the service level agreements section of the "Cloud Computing Use Cases Whitepaper" Version 4.0 -- posted by the Cloud Computing Use Cases Discussion Group -- to highlight the SLA issues that architects and developers should consider as they move to the cloud.

Review and summary of cloud security scenariosThis article reviews the security section of the "Cloud Computing Use Cases Whitepaper" Version 3.0 -- posted by the Cloud Computer Computing Use Cases Discussion Group -- to highlight the security issues that architects and developers should consider as they move to the cloud.

Anatomy of an open source cloudCloud computing is no longer a technology on the cusp of breaking out, but a valuable and important technology that is fundamentally changing the way we use and develop applications. As you would expect, Linux and open source provide the foundation for the cloud (for both public and private infrastructures). Explore the anatomy of the cloud, its architecture, and the open source technologies used to build these dynamic and scalable computing and storage platforms.

Cloud services for your virtual infrastructure: Platform as a Service (PaaS) and AppScaleThis series explores the major types of cloud services and related software you can use to build Web-scale systems. In this article, learn about AppScale and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud computing. Explore the features and architecture of this virtual infrastructure. It's a great way to test your Google App Engine applications on your local resources or virtualized cloud infrastructures, such as Amazon EC2 or Eucalyptus.

Experts present various ideas and different scenarios to detail how to conceptualize your move into a cloud environment.

Cloud success secret: Flexible capacity planningOne promise of cloud computing is that virtualization will reduce the number of servers needed. It is therefore critical to identify the balanced amount of cloud infrastructure required to meet the anticipated needs of users. The authors introduce basic concepts to help you understand cloud capacity and how to calculate for it. They also introduce a tool that can help you plan for the optimal resources necessary to make your cloud environment a success.

Solve cloud-related Big Data problems with MapReduceAt times, you need to be able to access more physical and virtual resources to achieve complex compute-intensive results, but setting up a grid system within an organization can face resource, logistical, and technical hurdles; even some political ones. Cloud computing comes to the rescue in this case. It also combines perfectly with the MapReduce function for handling lots of Big Data computations by making it both transparent and irrelevant where two numbers get added together. The author demonstrates why cloud computing and MapReduce are helpful in solving Big Data problems.

Customize deployment behavior using WebSphere CloudBurst environment profilesSelf-service access and customization capability are key themes when using WebSphere CloudBurst. Multiple users can create and provision their own unique middleware application environments by using a range of customization techniques that apply to image construction, pattern building, and pattern deployment. The newest release of WebSphere CloudBurst expands the reach of the customization capabilities to allow a single appliance to support users' various deployment needs. Users can utilize the new environment profiles feature to affect the placement of the parts in a virtual system, apply their own naming conventions to virtual machines, and provide hostname configuration for each virtual machine in the system.

Automate virtual machine discovery and self-connectivityIn a virtual data center the deployment and the dismissal of complex appliances require that multiple configuration steps be executed. Reconfiguration requirements include establishing and removing communication between different components of the same product running in different virtual machines (VMs) as well as different products running in different VMs. Traditionally this process has been burdensomely manual or somewhat inflexible via the invoking of predefined scripts with static values. In this article, the authors propose StereoCable, automated plug-and-play support of complex virtual appliances in a virtual data center, to solve this issue. This way VMs are able to discover and automatically connect to each other based on predefined connections policies.

Deliver cloud network control to the userOne concern for adopters of cloud technology is control -- control of data, control of access, even control of networking in the cloud, across multiple clouds, and between the cloud and private infrastructures. The authors describe how using a virtual network -- hybrid devices that act as virtual routers, switches, SSL and IPSec VPN concentrators, and protocol redistributors, all tied up in a configurable mesh -- can give the user control of addressing, topology, protocols, and encrypted communications for the devices the user deploys to the cloud. A real-world example, using existing technology, will be provided.

Enable application-centric cloud managementLearn about application-centric-style management, the three key steps to achieve it, and how to automate the deployment of a two-tier J2EE application in the IBM Cloud. This article shows you how to create an action, hook actions to events, and event handling.

Considerations for migrating to the cloudIBM cloud expert Dave Russell has two conversations with the Google Cloud Computing Use Cases group about considerations and processes when planning to add a migration-to-the-cloud section to the group's ever-evolving whitepaper on cloud computing.

Assess enterprise applications for cloud migrationIt's a simple question, but the answer is anything but simple: How do you know whether an enterprise application is suited for the cloud? Follow along as the author demonstrates a step-by-step application portfolio assessment approach to determining the suitability of your enterprise applications for the cloud based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).

Cloud computing by government agenciesThe United States federal government has the largest annual IT budget of any organization, almost $80 billion in 2010 alone. To save money and improve services, the government is beginning to adopt a cloud first approach towards procuring new and replacement systems. The business cases and technical benefits for moving into the cloud are the same for the government as they are for other firms, only the savings and challenges are much bigger. Government agencies have two special challenges: procurement and security. This article briefly describes the procurement challenges and then jumps into advising government cloud service purchasers on the positives and negatives of security in the cloud, and how to manage their potential vendors' security risks. The security threats are covered from the government's point of view, but smart cloud vendors will take it as a preview of what questions the government might ask them and prepare accordingly.

Review and summary of cloud service level agreementsThis is a review of the service level agreements section of the "Cloud Computing Use Cases Whitepaper" Version 4.0 -- posted by the Cloud Computing Use Cases Discussion Group -- to highlight the SLA issues that architects and developers should consider as they move to the cloud.